The most contentious UK magazine was probably The Flat Response which later morphed into Hi-Fi Review in the 1980s.
It was edited by one Chris Frankland who certainly had strong opinions about audio equipment. I recall reading that the SME arms got short shrift as did many 'exotic' cartridges.
CF seemed to genuinely prefer the Linn Basik arm and cartridge. (Neither of which were built by Linn).
I can only imagine how such opinions might have gone down in certain places such as Celestion whose SL6 and SL600 also took a real hammering.
When you see how tame reviews are now, lord knows how they got away with it back then.
Anyway, there's a great background article to the whole shenanigans linked below. Interesting to hear that Linn once employed blind listening tests themselves!
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The Flat Response Magazine by Tom Tom Audio Nov 28, 2017
http://thetomtomclub.ning.com/m/blogpost?id=6506457%3ABlogPost%3A9465